World View & Market Commentary. Forest first; Trees second. Focused on Real & Knowable facts that filter through the "experts" fluff and media hyperbole. Where we've been, what the future may hold and developing a better way forward.

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Damon produces another high quality article that is on target in terms of the problem, the people behind it, and in terms of the solution – Freedom’s Vision.

And just to piggyback on Damon’s Ben Bernanke survey, it’s my understanding from talking to people who frequently interact with our politicians that 90% of them fall into the clueless category, but the other 10% are in on what Damon is suggesting. It’s obvious, despite the Harvard lobotomy, that Bernanke isn’t clueless as he funnels trillions at the banks for whom he works… and thus it places him in the other 10% that are in on the debt pushing takeover of the Republic.

Now all we have to do is figure out how Damon escaped the Harvard neuron killing procedure himself and then replicate it… perhaps interfacing with the real world and staying far removed from people like Jamie Dimon is a good start:

Central Banking vs. The Republic and the World

A couple of days ago in Japan, Ben Bernanke said that the benefits of low interest rate policies that politicians want “are not sustainable and will soon evaporate, leaving behind inflationary pressures that worsen the economy’s long-term prospects…...thus political interference in monetary policy can generate undesirable boom-bust cycles that ultimately lead to both a less stable economy and higher inflation.”

[pause inserted so you have time to pick your jaw up off the floor]

We are now in the midst of one of the biggest boom-busts in history, all under the Fed’s watch, caused by its multi-decade low interest rate policy among other things, yet that is the scenario he says government oversight would cause! So what’s really going on here beneath Ben’s Harvard veneer?

He is trying to scare us with a fabricated boogie man—the idea that your elected leaders might do in some imaginary future what the Fed has already done in the unimaginable present. He wants you to be scared of this republic’s legislature reclaiming some power back from the financial empire that runs the global corporate system, and the US government from behind closed doors (article: Wall Street Empire). In other words, he wants you to continue submitting to financial dictatorship rather than rediscovering the principles of freedom, distributed power, and effective government. Will you choose submission or discovery? As more and more people are realizing, we are now in one of the most critical moments “in the course of human events.”

We have seen this moment before, especially from Hollywood. It is the WALL-E moment when the captain of the starship Axiom (our elected leaders) finally wrestles power back from Auto (the Fed cartel on Wall Street) and restores life by saving humanity from its TV programming (our media). It is the Gladiator moment when General Maximus wakes up to the imperial enemy and commits himself to restoring the republic. It is the Star Wars moment when Darth Vader chooses life for his son and the republic by throwing the emperor to his death. Which will you choose? Will real life turn out as well as fiction? Or will Ben’s scare tactics keep you in fear?

The Ben Bernanke Survey

I’m curious for your opinion about why Ben is doing this. Reply in the comments below with your answer to this multiple choice question: Who is Ben Bernanke?

Honest – he actually believes what he says. He’s still a Harvard kid getting gold stars on his homework as he repeats the fraudulent load of crap known as neoclassical economics.

Dishonest – he knows he’s just protecting the powers behind the Fed system and furthering their global restructuring plan by threatening the politicians with more boom-busts if they try to serve the people.

Insane – he’s not in touch with reality.

Folks like Jim Rogers, Marc Faber, and Peter Schiff promote #1, the idea that he’s a clueless theoretician repeatedly making mistakes. No doubt there was a time when he was just a bright-eyed overachiever being pumped full of theory disconnected from reality. But these guys ignore Ben’s comments in Japan. He makes it clear that he knows exaggerated low interest rate policies cause major problems, i.e. he’s not ignorant, but he engages in them anyway! So again I ask what’s really going on?

Feel free to disagree, but #2 is my answer, which means we need to stop believing Rogers, Faber, and Schiff that he’s a pedantic bureaucrat. That’s pure spin that reinforces the idea there’s no strategic plan behind what the G20, IMF, BIS, and Fed are doing in response to the coordinated actions of Rubin, Summers, Paulson, Geithner, Greenspan, AIG, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, etc. Those who promote #1 are suggesting that these folks, all part of the elite Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), are basically randomly screwing up a kids’ game of checkers. No chance. The fact is we are in the mist of a global chess game being played above the heads of national governments in which debt and leverage are used to restructure the world under a new global money and banking system (video: Emerging Global Empire). I suggest Bernanke’s sole purpose is to hide the real role the Federal Reserve has played in this game while also helping to keep Congress from asserting its power.

Central Banking: Pro or Con?

The media likes to claim that voicing opposition to the Fed is lower class populism. But of course the media doesn’t think. It just promotes left or right groupthink for the few corporate powers that own the media. They don’t want you thinking about the question of a central bank. If they did, we might better understand the pros and cons.

The pro is that without a central body regulating the value of currency, thousands of banks across the country would be randomly cranking credit up and down resulting in economic turmoil. True. Some of the founders understood that without a controlled currency, private banking institutions could profit massively off whipsawing the people, which is why Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution says the government should regulate the value of the currency. But of course we know this pro doesn’t apply to the Fed structure because the most extreme periods of economic turmoil have happened since it was created.

The problem with this pro is the first con of the Fed’s form of central banking—it puts currency control in private hands. Rather than the Fed having power over the banks, its structure actually gives the primary dealer banks (mega firms like JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and many foreign banks) significant power to tell it what to do. Entrenched powers behind these firms working together in cartel groups like the New York Fed and CFR have far more leverage than the president, i.e. an individual with no financial experience who rotates into office for a short period of time completely surrounded by bankers and their allies. The entire purpose of the Constitution and having a republic, despite its flaws, was to put power in the hands of the public vs. a concentrated private oligarchy. But the Fed system creates such an oligarchy, as many Americans now see since the crash of 2008.

Mathematical con: Basing a currency on nothing but interest-bearing debt as the Fed system does creates the need for perpetual exponential growth (video: Culture of Empire part 1). This feels like a good thing at first, but eventually the accompanying perpetual inflation becomes clear (Bernanke admitted this in Japan by also saying central banks target 2% inflation—a huge indicator economists ignore that the system is unsustainable—a stable system would target zero). The perpetually increasing debt eventually becomes shocking (look around the world). The perpetually increasing scale and velocity of the system starts causing profound harm (Part 2 and 3). Exponential systems are guaranteed to crash. The eventual reckoning with the impossibility of exponential math is not pretty, and we are now entering the reckoning phase for our system (Chris Martenson video on Exponential Growth).

Economic con: Oligarchic monetary systems tend toward a 2-tiered society, money pushing rulers vs. money using servants who scramble to pay the rulers back plus interest. The ruling financial class eventually takes over the productive economy and then parasitically destroys the host upon which it lives as gambling and speculation replace savings and production as the engine of growth. Such is the power of a monetary system based on nothing but debt (Michael Hudson video).

Moral con: A debt-based monetary system enshrines usury, i.e. living off the backs of others by doing nothing but subjugating a population to systemic interest-bearing debt. So the foundation of our monetary system under the Federal Reserve is built upon immorality (article: Usury and the Coming Crash).

Philosophical con: Related to the moral and economic cons is the philosophical ideal of freedom. An oligarchic monetary system forces the great mass of the population into servitude. It effectively creates a predator/prey structure in society. In a system based purely on debt, the banking powers are able to super-inflate the system to drive up asset prices, and then deflate the system sucking value and assets up the pyramid to consolidate power. We saw this over the last 10 years. This is the biggest and brightest example of why Jefferson said “banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies.” It’s also the best example of why the Constitution demands that government regulate the currency.

Solution

So how can we get the one pro of a central monetary authority regulating the value of the currency without any of the cons above? Do precisely what Ben says we shouldn’t do—reestablish the republic by putting currency regulation in the hands of public officials as the Constitutions says. If a country doesn’t have a sovereign currency, it doesn’t have a sovereign government. We are learning that painful lesson now as we see Greece being attacked and taken over by financial institutions. The same thing has happened to many countries in the past and it will happen in the future if governments don’t take charge. At that point everyone will know the truth—governments are held hostage by private financial interests. But more and more Americans are realizing the truth now and pushing for change.

However, the change is not as simple as ending the Fed. Without a transition plan, that would cause a disaster since it is the basis for the money supply. The key is to nationalize the Fed, and possibly its primary dealers during the transition phase, to keep them from holding us hostage with the threat of collapse. Then with honest public officials in Treasury and other agencies that don’t represent Goldman Sachs and the rest of the financial cartel—people like William Black, Brooksley Born, Janet Tavakoli, Michael Hudson, Eliot Spitzer, Harry Markopolos—it will be possible to restructure the monetary system. Other components of the solution involve the US Treasury printing sovereign US notes, state banking systems like North Dakota to restore state power, etc. (see details at Freedom’s Vision)

Just a short time ago things felt hopeless because, as Martin Luther King warned, “One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change.” But the republic has heeded his call. It is awakening. Restoration is on the horizon, and that’s a good thing for America and the rest of the world.